A Bit Like You And Me Radio

June 26, 2014

This long-tenured band was formed in the southern side of Sydney, Australia in 1961. Located near Sydney’s beaches, the group gravitated toward the sounds of surf rock and would later go on to become among the first in their genre, in Australia, to write their own songs. They took their name from a local gas station company and had their most popular lineup finalized by 1962. There was Theo Penglis on lead and rhythm guitar; Jim Skaithitis on guitar; Bosco Bosanac on bass; and Peter Hood on drums.

The band was unique from other Australian instrumental acts in the sense that they were heavily influenced by European sounds. Each of the members had moved to Australia from Europe as youths, and their music reflected their families’ heritages (Greece, Yugoslavia, and Hungary). The band was signed to CBS Records in 1963 and released nine successful singles and three albums, the most notable single being “Bombora” in 1963.

In 1965, the band added vocalist and ‘50s rocker Johnny Rebb. A few singles and albums later, in March 1967, the band released the song heard below. It was written by the band’s drummer, Peter Hood, and sang by the latest addition to the band, Johnny Rebb. It was featured as the B-Side of a single which had “You Tell Me Why,” a cover of a song made popular by The Beau Brummels, as the A-Side.

June 24, 2014

Jackson C. Frank was born in Buffalo, New York in 1943. Although Frank and his family had briefly moved out to Ohio when he was a boy, they made their return to New York when he was eleven, moving to a town called Cheektowaga. Here, Frank attended a newly built school, Cleveland Hill Elementary, where the first of many tragedies would affect his life. While attending music class in 1954, a furnace exploded in the wooden annex where Frank and his classmates were being taught. Fifteen of Frank’s sixth-grade classmates died in the resulting fire, and Frank himself was hospitalized for seven months from the severe burns, which covered fifty percent of his body. (Not only was he physically scarred for the remainder of his life, but the mobility of his hands was decreased, making it that much more impressive that he could play the guitar as well as he did.) While hospitalized, one of Frank’s teachers, Charlie Castelli, brought an acoustic guitar to the hospital to try and keep Frank’s spirits lively. It was from this kind gesture that Jackson C. Frank became interested in playing guitar.

At age thirteen, Jackson’s mother had agreed to take him to Graceland (the home of Elvis Presley) in Tennessee. While viewing the home from outside, Elvis himself unexpectedly started walking down the driveway. He was kind to Jackson, shook his hand, took a photograph with him, and even invited him inside to meet his own parents. It was one of the few high points in Jackson’s life, which would be overwhelmed with numerous lows.

When Frank turned twenty-one in 1964, he received an insurance check for the injuries he sustained from the fire in his youth, totaling $110,500. His girlfriend of the time, Katherine Henry, noticed that it was almost immediately that Jackson’s behavior began to change. He thought- and was partly correct- that everyone was out to get his money. Friends took advantage of him; people looked to his wallet for investments; and Frank generally gave in. When Katherine told him she was breaking up with him and moving to England, Jackson decided to go with her. They took a boat to England and, not even six months later, the couple (who had remained together) accidentally became pregnant. They mutually agreed that Katherine should have an abortion and went back to New York together. Through one of Jackson’s ex-girlfriends, they were sent to a doctor in Washington DC where the illegal abortion was carried out. Between the stress from the procedure and the realization that their relationship wasn’t that strong, Katherine chose to end their relationship once and for all. She convinced Jackson to return to England without her.

Newly single, Jackson had more free time to look for career opportunities. He began to play coffee houses around England and befriended a woman named Judith Piepe. It was then that Piepe introduced Jackson to Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, who were staying with her in her apartment. When Jackson played some of his music for the duo, Simon was reportedly so impressed that he offered to produce Frank’s first album. Simon kept his word when Jackson secured a record deal with Columbia. Interestingly, when it came time to record the album, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, and Al Stewart were all in attendance, and Frank was reportedly so nervous he had to have screens put up around him in order to play, because he couldn’t concentrate with everyone watching him. The album, self-titled Jackson C. Frank, was recorded in its entirety in less than three hours and released in the UK in December 1965.

The album was well received by the folk community, who regularly requested it on John Peel’s BBC radio show. The requests became so frequent that Peel contacted Frank directly and got him to perform songs live on the radio show, numerous times.

With his connections in London, Frank became acquainted with some of the biggest folk names coming to the city: Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and many others. He also became the go-to guy for up and coming American folk singers arriving in the city and looking for opportunities. He would often buy them dinner and help support them, knowing the difficulties of trying to make it as a folk artist. It was around this time that he became very close friends with a London-born nursing student who was trying to make it as a folk artist, Sandy Denny. Jackson and Sandy soon became an item and Jackson appeared on some of her earliest recorded material.

By 1968, Frank’s peak seemed to come to an end. The numbers had been coming back from the release of his album in the United States and it did very, very poorly. To make matters worse, his album sales in the UK were declining due to the public’s shifting interest toward psychedelic and hard rock. And after years of generosity, his insurance money was finally starting to run out. When he attempted to write new material for a second album, he was stricken with writer’s block. What songs he was able to compose were met with only lukewarm responses when performed at the coffeehouses. With what little money he had left from the insurance claim, Frank moved back the United States, no longer with Denny, and took residence in Woodstock, New York.

While living in Woodstock in the early 1970s, Frank met Elaine Sedgwick, a former model. The two fell in love, were married, and had two children: a son and a daughter, Angeline. With heartbreak, the couple lost their only son at an early age to cystic fibrosis. Having been on the brink of emotional instability from the fire experienced in his youth, the death of Frank’s son was enough to cause him to mentally crack. The death of their son also caused Jackson and Elaine’s marriage to crumble, which threw Jackson into a further state of depression.

It wasn’t until 1977 that Frank started to make a mental recovery and began recording new music. Unfortunately, when he attempted to have his music picked up by a record studio, he was consistently met with negative feedback. This time, Frank fell back into a depression much worse than before, while his ailing body grew weaker from the injuries sustained at the fire so many years ago. He was eventually hospitalized for both emotional and physical reasons before he was able to move back home with his mother.

In 1984, Frank left for New York City in a desperate attempt to find Paul Simon, who he felt could help boost his career. When what little money he had ran out before he could find him, he was forced to sleep on the streets. For the next few years, Jackson lived on the streets, homeless, poor, and facing numerous physical ailments related to the Cleveland Hill Elementary fire from his youth. After years on the streets, Frank was finally picked up by the state and transported to a mental institute called Simmonds Court in Woodstock, New York.

In the early 1990s, a fan of Frank’s by the name of Jim Abbott located him and tried to get him back on his feet. Having only seen the picture of him from his album, he was stunned to see that Frank had become vastly overweight, scruffy, and disheveled looking. The weight had been brought on from a problem with his thyroid, which was one of the many physical problems attributed to the fire when he was eleven. To add insult to injury, it wasn’t long after Abbott tracked Frank down that Frank lost sight in his left eye, as he was the victim of a group of kids who decided to shoot an air soft rifle at random strangers.

To help Frank, Abbott was able to track down some of the royalty money owed to Frank from his 1965 album, which was still moderately popular in places in Europe. He was also responsible for getting Frank taken out of the mental institution and put into a home for senior citizens. Lastly, Abbott was able to get Frank back in the recording studio to record new material, as well as getting all of his old material re-released on CD- this time accompanied by previously unreleased demos. On March 3, 1999, just one day after his fifty-sixth birthday, Jackson C. Frank passed away from pneumonia and cardiac arrest in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

The song heard below was the opening track to Frank’s debut, eponymous titled album, recorded in July 1965 and released in December 1965. Considering the fame of artists such as Simon & Garfunkel and the obscurity of Jackson C. Frank, it's quite possible you've heard this song before by a different artist. It was written and composed by Frank, and as such, his version is the original. Since its initial release, the song has become a blues/folk standard and has been covered by numerous artists, including the previously mentioned Simon and Garfunkel, as well as Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, the Counting Crows, John Mayer, and many, many others.

June 19, 2014

In November 1964, Hugo Gordijn went to the basement of a bowling alley in Scheveningen, in The Hague, in the Netherlands to see a band called The Klits. Led by Peter Sjardin, the Dutch band hired Gordijn to be their manager. On New Year’s Day in 1966, the band renamed themselves Groep 1850, or, “Group 1850” if you prefer it in English. They consisted of Peter Sjardin on vocals, flute, and organ; Daniel van Bergen on guitar and piano; Ruud van Buuren and Rob de Rijke on bass; and Beer Klaasse on drums.

The band released six singles and two full-length albums in what remained of the 1960s, sans a year-long break-up beginning somewhere in 1968. They didn’t get a ton of exposure and predominately remained a “garage” type band, so it’s presumable that a career highlight for them may have been getting to open for The Mothers of Invention in September 1967 at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.

Written by Hans van Hemert and Peter Sjardin, this song was the A-Side of a single released by the band in late December 1967. Like the rest of the world, the band was heavily into psychedelic rock and fell into the more “acid” rock genre of the period. They sounded a bit like the earlier Pink Floyd, even featuring some progressive rock aspects which were far ahead of their time.

June 17, 2014

As The Zombies toured around the United States playing songs like “She’s Not There” and “Tell Her No” as a part of the British Invasion, they began to simultaneously record the songs for what would be their first full-length album. Recorded throughout the latter half of 1964, the band recorded over twenty tracks, with a near amount of self-written material and rhythm & blues songs originally performed by other artists. The powers that be whittled down the track listing for the album’s UK release, where it was given the title Begin Here. Over in the US, the album was retitled The Zombies and the track listing differed slightly. First released in 1965, Begin Here was considered a disappointment. So much so, that although the group had recorded plenty enough material for there to be a follow-up album, most of the songs were shelved and went unreleased for years.

The song heard below was one of the tracks which made the cut for the band’s Begin Here album. It was written by the band’s organist, Rod Argent, who also happened to be a founding member. The song is primarily done in a capella, although an organ does make a soft appearance toward the end. Besides being released on Begin Here in March 1965, the song was also released as the B-Side of The Zombies' single “Gotta Get a Hold of Myself,” which failed to chart after its UK-only release in September 1966.

Despite his accomplished career as a songwriter, Mann sometimes took the spotlight and sang songs, as well. In 1961, he sang the song heard below, which he had co-written with Gerry Goffin. The lyrics of this novelty song tell the somewhat true tale of how doo-wop music led his girl to fall in love with him. In a sense, this was true, as Mann and his future wife/songwriting partner, Cynthia Weil, had worked together writing doo-wop songs for groups of the time.

I’d like to thank the guy
Who wrote the song
That made my baby fall in love with me

Who put the “bomp”
In the “bomp ba bomp ba bomp”?
Who put the “ram”
In the “rama-lama-ding-dong”?
Who put the “bop”
In the “bop shoo bop shoo bop”?
Who put the “dip”
In the “dip-da-dip-da-dip”?
Who was that man?
I’d like to shake his hand
He made my baby fall in love with me
(Yeah)

When my baby heard
“Bomp ba ba bomp”
“Ba bomp ba bomp ba”
Every word went right into her heart
And when she heard them singin’
“Rama lama lama lama”
“Lama ding dong”
She said we’d never have to part

So
Who put the “bomp”
In the “bomp ba bomp ba bomp”?
Who put the “ram”
In the “rama-lama-ding-dong”?
Who put the “bop”
In the “bop shoo bop shoo bop”?
Who put the “dip”
In the “dip-da-dip-da-dip”?
Who was that man?
I’d like to shake his hand
He made my baby fall in love with me
(Yeah)

So
Who put the “bomp”
In the “bomp ba bomp ba bomp”?
Who put the “ram”
In the “rama-lama-ding-dong”?
Who put the “bop”
In the “bop shoo bop shoo bop”?
Who put the “dip”
In the “dip-da-dip-da-dip”?
Who was that man?
I’d like to shake his hand
He made my baby fall in love with me
(Yeah)

June 10, 2014

If you’re a fan of ’60s garage classics, there’s a good chance you’ve heard The Nightcrawlers’ “The Little Black Egg” from 1965. If you haven’t, you can listen to the song in our previous post. And while we’re on the subject, you can also read what The Nightcrawlers’ Sylvan Wells had to say about the band and the song in an exclusive story he provided to us.

As mentioned in our previous post, Charlie Conlon (the group’s principal singer, songwriter, and bass player) was asked to leave The Nightcrawlers in late 1966/early 1967. The remaining members of the band attempted to go on without him, but folded after a few months. In the meantime, Charlie Conlon moved from where The Nightcrawlers were based (Daytona, Florida), and relocated to Miami, Florida. Once in Miami, Charlie started a new band: Conlon & The Crawlers. They released two singles on the Marlin label, based in Miami, in 1967, but neither of the songs made much of an impact.

Written by Charlie Conlon, this song was released in March 1967 and accompanied by the B-Side “You’re Comin’ On.” If you’re familiar with “The Little Black Egg,” you’ll definitely hear Conlon attempting to recreate its style in this track. Although it didn’t become a garage classic like his “The Little Black Egg,” it did manage to reach number nineteen on the nearby Orlando, Florida charts.

Conlon & The Crawlers - I Won't Tell (1967)

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Lyrics:

A teaspoon holds more than the fork does
A long snail eats more than a short one
Let the people find out for themselves
I won’t tell; I won’t tell
I won’t tell them ‘bout it

A three-legged horse won’t beat a fourth one
My ice box cools more than a hot one
Let the flowers find out for themselves
I won’t tell; I won’t tell
I won’t tell

And on the way, I’ll stop by the bay
Because black and green won’t fade away

A teaspoon holds more than the fork does
A long snail eats more than a short one
Let the people find out for themselves
I won’t tell; I won’t tell
I won’t tell
I won’t tell
I won’t tell
I won’t tell
No, I won’t tell
I won’t tell…

You’ll notice near the beginning of that post that there was a song The Gentle Soul recorded, which had been written by a fourteen year old Jackson Browne. The song heard below in this post is that song. “Flying Thing” was one of the three songs Jackson Browne had written by the age of fourteen. He wrote the music and lyrics, but the arrangements were done by The Gentle Soul (Pamela Polland and Rick Stanley). It wasn’t released on The Gentle Soul’s only album (probably because it wasn’t written by them, as claimed by Pamela Polland herself), but it was released on one of the two singles the band put out. Unfortunately, like with their rest of their music, the single wasn’t promoted and it made little impact on the charts.

After a little over a year of correspondence, I’m proud to announce that The Gentle Soul’s Rick Stanley has supplied numerous stories to share with A Bit Like You And Me. Rick was kind enough to share a bunch of excerpts from an upcoming autobiography he’s writing, titled My Song of Life. There was a very large quantity of material, so I’ve taken the liberty of chopping it down to the very best parts.

Excerpts from My Song of Life by Rick Stanley

[...]Not long after my audition with Stephen [Stills, to try out for Buffalo Springfield], Terry [Melcher] contacted Pamela [Polland] and was raving about the two of us. He wanted to get us in the studio as soon as possible to make a demo for the Columbia Record exec.’s who make the decisions about signing new acts.

What happened next is a bit hazy in my fading memory-pictures, but I think some time passed before Terry had time to get us into the studio. Pamela had already started to recruit other musicians to back us up; and, I somehow ended up in the Valley, staying in a rented house with two of the potential band members: Riley “Wyldflower” Cummings and a drummer from Riley’s sort of Beatle-esque group. They had toured the southwest and one of the groupies latched on to them in Tulsa, by offering the money she received from an insurance claim for her broken leg, so that the drummer could buy a new set of drums. Riley wrote his own songs in the vein of the early Beatles- like “Love Me Do” and “Twist and Shout”- which didn’t interest me at all. It had been done and couldn’t possibly attract a record company or get us on the radio.

Riley was six-foot five-inches tall with wild, light-brown, curly hair and almost always stoned. He was a likable Irish-American, son of a car dealership owner in the valley, and played decent rhythm guitar in the typical pop band genre. But Pam and I were really acoustic folk musicians and I couldn’t understand why she wanted a pop guitar player who couldn’t really sing well enough to add a harmony. I think she just liked him. And so, she would come over and we would practice her songs and a few others in preparation for the Columbia demo with Terry. Meanwhile, we were trying to come up with a name for our group, which is probably more fun than practicing.

The original group with Riley “Wyldflower” Cummings and Sandy Konikoff [before The Gentle Soul was finalized as a duo]

One night, Riley had “scored” a kilo of grass with the groupie’s money and proceeded to lie back on his bed and blow pot smoke into the face of his cat, who just lay there on his chest, looking up at him and throwing cat-kisses with his eyes. Riley said, “He’s such a gentle soul,” and, I jumped on this and said, “That’s the name for our group! ‘The Gentle Soul’!” And so it was! I felt like Riley must have thought that marijuana was a universal balm for all creatures great and small, and that it couldn’t possibly do any harm. The next day, the cat was acting like he’d eaten fifty pounds of cat nip- running, flipping, and jumping in a spastic frenzy- seeing something in la la land and lunging for it, only to flop upside down on his back. He got up and bashed headlong into the patio window and lay there unconscious for a while. I guess the poor thing managed to get out of the house and we never saw it again.

Soon, we all moved in to an old house on Venice Beach that Pam and the groupie managed to lease. Each of us had our own room and I rigged up some bamboo curtains on the walls all around my little abode, and slept on an old mattress with a new cotton cover that I found in a thrift store. Pam still had her own place, but would come over to practice. The groupie and the drummer had the choice room downstairs, and Riley and I had our little rooms upstairs. I was beginning to feel like this wasn’t going anywhere. The drummer didn’t know how to drum and Riley’s main focus was getting high. Anyway, nature doesn’t allow a vacuum to persist, and thus brought a stranger to the house. He arrived when the drummer was away for some reason and proceeded to seduce the groupie without much effort. After four days of being serviced by the stranger, her previous lover returned: the inadequate drummer. The groupie pretended that nothing had happened with the stranger, and offered the attic as her new lover’s bedroom.

The attic was where we practiced, and this didn’t suit lover-boy at all. He never spoke a word to any of us; only the groupie was privy to his profound thoughts. He would just sit and stew when we were up there, making all kinds of bored and inconvenienced expressions, with his little poet’s pad in full view and his pencil sticking out from behind one ear. I didn’t like this asshole’s attitude at all. He didn’t contribute anything for rent, expected to be fed, and all for the price of having sex with the groupie when the drummer wasn’t around. You may be a bit surprised to know who this guy was. It was Jim Morrison- you know, The Doors.

The whole thing finally came to a head when the drummer discovered Jim and his true love going at it in his own bed. He flew into a rage, but ended up begging the groupie to stay with him. It was clear that she finally understood why he wanted her: the bloody drums and the rest of her insurance money to live on, of course! So, that day, he packed up his drums and left the house. Jim didn’t hang around much longer either[...]

Thanks,
Rick Stanley

There is a lot more to tell about Rick's unusual life; check out My Song of Life by Rick Stanley when it comes out. If you want to know when it’s released, just send your email to nr.stan[at]gmail[dot]com.

How hilarious is that? Even though Rick didn't seem to appreciate Jim Morrison's antics, I have to say it sounds pretty amusing all these years later! And it's definitely fun to know that The Gentle Soul's name was helpfully inspired by a cat. A big 'thank you' to Rick Stanley for sharing such interesting excerpts from his forthcoming book, My Song of Life! Be sure to check out the book when it's released, as it contains other stories involving Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Levon Helm, and many, many more!

She’s a flying thing that sings
With her eyes like smoky rings
And the sun can feel her presence in the sky

And I think I’m gonna stay
‘cause there’s nothin’ in our way
And she says that she can teach me how to fly
(Teach me how to fly)

If I could love her more than I have ever loved before
Then tomorrow I’ll be standing at her door

And when I hear her voice
I have no other choice
But to bend back my head and search the sky

Her hair is spun so fine
Roses fell like laughing wine
And she says that she can teach me how to fly
(Teach me how to fly)

If I could give her all the things she’s never had before
Then tomorrow I’ll be standing at her door

To see her walking by is to see a windy sky
And the clouds reflecting in her eyes

And the softness of her skin
Makes me wonder where I’ve been
And she says that she can teach me how to fly
(Teach me how to fly)

If she could love me more than she has ever loved before
Then tomorrow I’ll be standing at her door

She’s a flying thing that sings
With her eyes like smoky rings
And she says that she can teach me how to fly
(Teach me how to fly)
And she says that she can teach me how to fly
(Teach me how to fly)
And she says that she can teach me how to fly
(Teach me how to fly…)

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About this 60s Music Website

The radio is infamous for playing the same dozen chart-topping hits day after day. There is a plethora of great music from the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s that never gets any air time. The purpose of A Bit Like You And Me is to share old, forgotten '60s music (as well as other old music) with all listeners, proving that there's more music from the past than the media would have you believe. Whether looking for new music or rediscovering forgotten music, A Bit Like You And Me is a great place to hear old songs.

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